Personal search (based on preselected sites, not the whole web) has been around for a while. Rollyo was one of the first I came across. Basically, a person enters sites they want to search, and when some enters a query into the text box, it search only those sources. Google now offers a similar service (where Google once was an innovator, they are increasingly becoming an imitator - bookmarks, reader, iGoogle, Orkut, etc.): Google Custom Search. Stephen Downes has created a custom edublog search tool from about 450 sources. Lijit is a similar service - you can add all your sites, del.icio.us bookmarks, digg submissions, and so on. The Lijit search of my online identity is here.
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The Google CSE has actually been around quite some time; Yahoo have also been offering a custom search builder tool for some time, while Microsoft/Live has a clunky search macro facility (see an overview of sorts in the presentation at http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010686.html ).
Just by the by, I cobbled together a Google CSE that searches over (video) tutorial sites: http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/howdoi (the story of its genesis is told here: http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010608.html )
I’ve been using Ligit for about a year. I like it, I think this social search will definitely grow over the next year. What I would like it to be able to do is search across the blogs in GReader (I don’t think it does this yet) as well as those in my blog roll.
Martin
Hi Tony - thanks for the links. (and info on CSE).
George
Hi Martin - good point about GReader. I like the search option within GReader, but to have the option in lijit would be nice.
George
Custom Search has been around a long time. About a year ago I posted a way to tie a del.icio.us tag to a google CSE and demoed the same at Northern Voice 07. Now you can just use the RSS feed from the tag, I think, and make it that much simpler.
Lijit has yet to return a search when I try to use it– maybe I have too many items in my set.